The two boys on the box pulled their caps over their eyes, and said not a word till the truants were clear. Then Telson said, “That was young Wyndham!”
“I know. I wonder if Paddy saw them?”
“Shouldn’t think so. And they didn’t see us. I say, will they get in before us?”
“It’ll be a shave if they do. What a row there’ll be if they don’t!”
It was a curious thing that almost immediately after this short dialogue Telson’s cap fell off into the road, and the fly had to be pulled up while he and Parson got down and looked for it. It was a dark night, and the cap took some time to find. When finally it was recovered, and progress was resumed, full five minutes had been lost over the search, by which time the truants had got a clear half-mile to the good, and were safe.
Chapter Fourteen.
The Boat-Race.
The few days that intervened between the Saturday of Brown’s party and the Wednesday of the great race were days of restless suspense in Willoughby. Even Welch’s caught the contagion, and regretted at the last hour that they had withdrawn from the all-important contest. As to the other two Houses, there never had been a year when the excitement ran so high or the rivalry grew so keen. Somehow the entire politics of Willoughby appeared to be mixed up in the contest, and it seemed as if the result of this one struggle was to decide everything.